Before & After: A Cheap and Easy Coat Rack

We stumbled awkwardly through last winter's guest visits without a coat rack by stuffing visitors' outerwear in our crowded hall closet, and blaming the fact that we'd only been in our new house for a few months. But, one year and hours of hook researching later, we really have no excuse for draping our coats over the sofa any longer.

While there are plenty of awesome coat racks out there — I'd die for the Eames Hang-It-All in Walnut, for example — I always got hung up on the price tags. So, finally, for $15 we picked up a batch of vintage metal hooks from the thrift store, spray painted them with a glossy red paint and loved the result. The hardest part was spacing them evenly, which required some careful measuring, but other than that the whole project was a cinch.